Sound at the BBC Television Center (part 7)

Normally a programme is recorded in the studio or outside on location on video tape, normally with the sound track in as good a condition as we can manage. Essentially what we try to do is the obvious equalising and level controlling to produce a continuous and viable sound track, so that when the tape goes into VT editing the video editor has a sensible sound track to work with...

From Studio to SYPHER

Normally a programme is recorded in the studio or outside on location
on video tape, normally with the sound track in as good a condition as we can
manage. Essentially what we try to do is the obvious equalising and level controlling
to produce a continuous and viable sound track, so that when the tape goes into
VT editing the video editor has a sensible sound track to work with. Our videotape
editors, unlike some others, would expect to do proper audio edits. That is
to say that they wouldnt necessarily expect to do the audio edit in the
same place as the video edit. They do it at the right place and they use mixers
to do proper soft joins rather than hard butt joins, and they will expect to
do whatever rebalancing is necessary to make the edits work. The idea is that
when they offer us an edited tape it will be be complete and the dialogue track
ought to be usable as it is. That speeds up the post production work enormously
because we can use a lot of whats already there. It may be that we intend
to replace the dialogue, or large parts of the dialogue, anyway in which case
we cooperate so that our Sound Supervisors and the VT editors can discuss whats
going on. Things like sitcoms can be quite complicated because you are editing
more or less a complete track. It has all the voices and the audience reaction
on it and if for vision reasons they cant make a sound track that works
then they let us know that so that we are prepared when it comes to post production.

The edited master video tape goes into a transfer area where copy work
tapes are made of it. The audio is copied onto an eight track Dolby submaster
and the video onto U-Matic with matching timecode. The original audio tracks
now come to us copied onto tracks 3 and 4 of the eight track with timecode on
8. That goes through the post production process and a final mix goes down onto
tracks 5 and 6. The tape goes back into a video area where the audio is laid
back against the original picture. It is checked and then its ready for
transmission. Thats the simplest process. There are many more complex
processes in which the audio involved in the post production has nothing to
do with the origination at all. The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de
Bargos is edited from picture material which has come from a variety of
sources on which the audio is totally useless. Thats entirely done in
post production, the whole thing.

David Mellor has been creating music and recording in professional and home studios for more than 30 years. This website is all about learning how to improve and have more fun with music and recording. If you enjoy creating music and recording it, then you're definitely in the right place :-)